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stoutfellowI've been a Tim Powers fan since encountering The Anubis Gates nearly thirty years ago. I learned of his close friendship with James Blaylock soon after - they co-created the poet William Ashbless, who is mentioned in several of Powers' works and appears in The Anubis Gates - and naturally began seeking out Blaylock's work. I soon enough found several of his novels - The Last Coin, All the Bells on Earth, The Elfin Ship, and The Stone Giant - but couldn't find his early novels, Homunculus and Lord Kelvin's Machine, which are often named as seminal in the emergence of steampunk.
Last week, on the way back from dropping off Gracie at the groomer, I stopped at the local Books-A-Million and picked up a few books. Among them were new printings of the two Blaylock stories I'd been hunting for. I took them with me on my trip to San Diego (for my father's birthday celebration), and the longish airport waits gave me enough time to read them.
Much of Blaylock's work is, well, silly. In The Last Coin, for instance, the villain is foiled, at least in part, by the practical jokes the protagonist plays on him, and The Elfin Ship features a band of, shall we say, Puckish elves. There's some silliness in Powers' The Anubis Gates, but the underlying story is serious; these stories are well to the comic, even slapstick, side of TAG. But the two earlier novels are quite a bit darker - almost, but not quite, as heavy in tone as Powers' The Stress of Her Regard. They are set in late-Victorian England and feature the weird science that's characteristic of steampunk; the villain Ignacio Narbondo is a hunchbacked mad scientist whose plots involve, variously, immortality and the diversion of a world-destroying comet. He is thwarted by Langdon St. Ives, another scientist, perhaps equally mad and outcast by the scientific establishment. St. Ives is a gloomy sort, brooding on his failures and not-quite-satisfactory successes; one book is dominated by his depression after Narbondo murders his wife. There's a good supporting cast - the toymaker/inventor Keeble, the efficient manservant Hasbro, the eternal henchman (for both sides) Kraken, and a variety of others, including (in some cameos) an obvious homage to Sherlock Holmes.
I enjoyed the books, though not quite as much as I'd expected; Blaylock doesn't have the fecundity of ideas that is Powers' hallmark, though they're clearly drawing from the same wells. Not a great writer, but definitely not a bad one.
Last week, on the way back from dropping off Gracie at the groomer, I stopped at the local Books-A-Million and picked up a few books. Among them were new printings of the two Blaylock stories I'd been hunting for. I took them with me on my trip to San Diego (for my father's birthday celebration), and the longish airport waits gave me enough time to read them.
Much of Blaylock's work is, well, silly. In The Last Coin, for instance, the villain is foiled, at least in part, by the practical jokes the protagonist plays on him, and The Elfin Ship features a band of, shall we say, Puckish elves. There's some silliness in Powers' The Anubis Gates, but the underlying story is serious; these stories are well to the comic, even slapstick, side of TAG. But the two earlier novels are quite a bit darker - almost, but not quite, as heavy in tone as Powers' The Stress of Her Regard. They are set in late-Victorian England and feature the weird science that's characteristic of steampunk; the villain Ignacio Narbondo is a hunchbacked mad scientist whose plots involve, variously, immortality and the diversion of a world-destroying comet. He is thwarted by Langdon St. Ives, another scientist, perhaps equally mad and outcast by the scientific establishment. St. Ives is a gloomy sort, brooding on his failures and not-quite-satisfactory successes; one book is dominated by his depression after Narbondo murders his wife. There's a good supporting cast - the toymaker/inventor Keeble, the efficient manservant Hasbro, the eternal henchman (for both sides) Kraken, and a variety of others, including (in some cameos) an obvious homage to Sherlock Holmes.
I enjoyed the books, though not quite as much as I'd expected; Blaylock doesn't have the fecundity of ideas that is Powers' hallmark, though they're clearly drawing from the same wells. Not a great writer, but definitely not a bad one.
